The stability of the U.S. vaccine market rests on an obscure $4 billion fund known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., long a critic of the fund, now appears intent on dismantling it.

Vaccine production can be a fickle business. Unlike other pharmaceutical products, ...Read more

I can't recall another time when my grown kids have called their mom the political journalist to talk about political news. But my older daughter couldn't help herself last weekend, after President Donald Trump posted a racist depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and then waved off all criticism, blamed someone else and seemed to ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- Milestone birthdays are a time to take stock.

So as the country turns 250, Americans should ask: Who are we?

Are we the nation of unblemished exceptionalism that many, including the president, project?

Or are we a nation that can recognize and reckon with our flaws? Flaws like the unconscionable and likely unconstitutional ...Read more

Although social media companies are in many ways villains that have not done nearly enough to protect children on their platforms, they nonetheless should not be held liable based on claims that they are creating addictive and harmful online environments.

On Monday, a trial began in Los Angeles Superior Court in a lawsuit brought by a woman, ...Read more

Twenty-five years ago, a political scientist noticed something changing in American bowling alleys and predicted something close to our current fraught and polarized moment.

In his best-selling book "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam documented how Americans were no longer connecting with each other in common places or in pursuit of common aims. ...Read more

One year ago, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos got front-row seats at President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. The images of these CEOs enjoying better seats than congressional leaders foreshadowed exactly how much access and influence Big Tech would wield in the Trump White House.

Since entering office, Trump has repeatedly ...Read more

Jean Kuczka, 61, had coached hundreds of students over the years and was looking forward to retirement. Alexzandria Bell, 15, was looking forward to traveling to Los Angeles to celebrate her sweet 16th birthday.

Kuczka and Bell both died on Oct. 24, 2022, after being shot in St. Louis’ Central Visual and Performing Arts High School by a ...Read more

As Americans recover from a barrage of Super Bowl food coupled with ads suggesting we eat even more — made light of in a funny and self-aware Uber Eats campaign starring Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey — a new study forecasts that nearly one-half of us will be obese by 2035. Meanwhile, a warning from the UK says our technological fix ...Read more

There’s something very cynical about Republicans’ efforts this week to pass a law requiring massive changes to the nation’s voting laws ahead of the November midterms. They must think Americans are easily fooled.

The proposal, the SAVE America Act, revives a stalled 2025 effort to require Americans to show a government ID to vote and ...Read more

Congratulations to a group of anonymous American citizens (federal grand jurors) who live in Washington, D.C. for rejecting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s reckless and dangerous effort to target six Democratic members of Congress for criminal prosecution.

The supposed crime of Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris ...Read more

Back in 2014, singer-songwriter Lee Murdock released a song that asked the question: “What about the water?” The song is about the pollution in Lake Erie in the 1960s and ’70s. At that time, headlines that Erie was dying helped energize across the Great Lakes region an environmental movement that forced a national commitment to clean up ...Read more

ChongLy (Scott) Thao, 56, was taking a Sunday afternoon nap recently at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, when federal immigration agents broke down his front door. A group of masked, armed men burst in and took him outdoors in subfreezing temperatures wearing only Crocs, his underwear and a blanket. After being questioned by agents for nearly an...Read more

It should be no surprise that a stagnant U.S. housing market has slowed the flow of people moving to Florida and Texas. If home transactions are weak, it stands to reason migration will be too. What was surprising, and instructive, in recently released census data was the growing appeal of a handful of midsized states in the southeast.

Alabama,...Read more

Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.

Legal and illegal do not. Except in Massachusetts, apparently.

That’s the logical pothole in An Act Ensuring Access to Equitable Representation in Immigration Proceedings, a bill making its way through the Massachusetts Legislature that would establish a publicly funded program to provide legal ...Read more

When thinking about the American people, columnist David Brooks is a glass-half-full kind of guy, but I, on the contrary, see the glass overflowing with goodness.

In his farewell column to The New York Times readers, Brooks wrote, “The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. We told multiple generations to come...Read more

The Trump administration’s removal of the multicolor gay pride flag from the federal Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village insults history and must be reversed. That flag has to fly again at Stonewall, the birthplace of the movement for LGBTQ rights.

The reason for hauling down the banner is ostensibly a directive issued last month...Read more

President Donald Trump always provokes outrage on the regular occasions when he descends into overt public racism, as he did last week by reposting a video that portrayed Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

But Trump’s bigger threat to race relations in America is coming through actions that attract much less attention — such as the federal ...Read more

The hardest part about being locked up in his own home, says Fermin, is seeing his young daughters cry.

Ever since federal agents swarmed Minnesota two months ago, Fermin and his wife and their two girls have hardly left their tiny Shakopee house. The family’s fear of being deported has cramped their ability to work and live, and their ...Read more

“Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?”

That question was put to Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who, along with Rodney Scott, head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, testified before the House Committee on ...Read more

Is Mike Johnson stupid?

The five-term Louisiana congressman earned a law degree and maneuvered his way to become speaker of the House. That requires a certain mental aptitude.

However, wanting that job, which entails bowing and scraping to President Donald Trump while herding an unruly GOP conference with an eyelash-thin majority, does tend to...Read more